Calling back a zombie ship from the graveyard of space

For 17 years, it has been drifting on a lonely course through space. Launched during the disco era and shuttered by NASA in 1997, the spacecraft is now returning to the civilization that abandoned it.

It seemed destined to pass without fanfare, except for a slight chance of slamming into the moon, and then loop aimlessly through the inner solar system. But now, a shoestring group of civilians headquartered in a decommissioned McDonald's have reached out and made contact with it — a long-distance handshake that was the first step toward snaring it back into Earth's orbit.

The zombie spaceship is coming home.

After 36 years in space, the craft, the International Sun-Earth Explorer-3, appears to be in good working order. The main challenge, the engineers say, is figuring out how to command it. No one has the full operating manual anymore, and the fragments are sometimes contradictory.

"We call ourselves techno-archaeologists," said Dennis Wingo, an engineer and entrepreneur who has a track record of extracting miracles from space antiques that NASA has given up on.

Wingo's company, Skycorp, has its offices in a McDonald's that NASA converted into a research campus for small technology companies, academia and nonprofits.

Wingo took on the project as if it were a stray puppy.

"No one else was going to do it," he said, "and it seemed like the right thing to do."

The race to revive the craft, ISEE-3, began in earnest in April. At the end of May, using the Arecibo Observatory radio telescope in Puerto Rico, the team succeeded in talking to the spacecraft.

Despite the obstacles, progress has been steady.

NASA launched ISEE-3 in 1978. Jimmy Carter was president, the Commodores topped the music charts with "Three Times a Lady," and the No. 1 movie was "Grease."

Since being retired in 1997, the craft has been looping around the sun on a 355-day orbit. ISEE-3 will catch up to and pass Earth in two months.

That is exactly what Robert W. Farquhar, the craft's flight director, intended.

If everything goes as hoped, ISEE-3 will end up in its original location to observe solar wind.

Now 81, Farquhar is half-retired, but collaborating with the reboot effort, and he is still thinking ahead. He wants to send ISEE-3 out to visit yet another comet. Wingo protests that it would cost too much money.